Soundwave evolves into a group messaging app for music lovers

Soundwave, the app designed for sharing your music taste, is today receiving its biggest update since it launched 13 months ago.

While Soundwave 1.0 was a good sketch of what Last.fm might be like if it had been developed a decade later, a year on the app has matured into something far more fully-formed.

The key new feature here is a Music Messenger that is essentially ‘group messaging with music’. You can create and join as many groups as you like, inviting existing Soundwave contacts, SMS or email. In addition to group IM you get a shared playlist that any member can add songs to it.

Whether you use it for groups of friends with a shared music taste, a trip to a music festival or just for sharing songs with people you’ve met online, Music Messenger certainly adds a whole new dimension to Soundwave as a product.

Meanwhile, the app has a received a visual overhaul and there’s a revised user discovery interface that makes it easy to find people with a similar music taste to you to follow.

The problem with Soundwave used to be that it was easy to forget you had it installed. You’d still be sharing songs into it but you weren’t interacting with the product. If Dublin-based Soundwave can encourage music-loving communities to take to the app as their messenger of choice, they might be able to build a solid, engaged audience. We suspect that is a marketing challenge that begins today.

➤ Soundwave [App Store / Google Play]